Latest Stories
Briefs Materials
Nonchromated Treatment for Aluminum Surfaces
AFRL scientists and engineers recently completed development of a nonchromated treatment for aluminum aircraft surfaces and structures. The new treatment method is the result of a collaborative...
Briefs Materials
Textile Capacitor
The Air Force (AF) is evolving from a Cold War-era force with a large, containment- focused infrastructure to a smaller, more responsive and affordable Air and Space Expeditionary Force. In support of this transformation, AFRL...
Briefs Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Film Cooling Using Pulsed Coolant
Turbine engine designers routinely use film cooling to cool engine components in the hot-gas flow-path. Film cooling is the process of injecting coolant fluid at one or more discrete locations along a surface...
Briefs Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The Propulsion - Safety, Affordability, and Readiness Program
Propulsion - Safety, Affordability, and Readiness (P-SAR) is a new and unique program effort intended to achieve common engine sustainment goals across the Army, Navy, and Air Force...
Briefs RF & Microwave Electronics
Unmanned SkyTote Demonstrates Capabilities
AFRL scientists are working on SkyTote, a novel unmanned air vehicle (UAV) that will take off and land vertically like a helicopter (see figure) but also transition into horizontal flight like a...
Briefs Aerospace
AFRL Finding Ways to Decrease Unmanned Air Vehicle Costs
In support of the Aeronautical Systems Center's (ASC) Global Hawk Systems Group, AFRL has undertaken a program to study manufacturing tolerances for laminar flow on aircraft wings. On the...
Briefs Aerospace
Computational Model of a Plasma Actuator
Controlling subsonic aerodynamic flow through the use of plasma actuators is an active area of research in both the Air Force (AF) and the general scientific community. A typical plasma actuator consists...
Briefs Nanotechnology
Automated Material Deposition Chamber
AFRL materials scientists have acquired an automated deposition chamber (see figure on next page) that enables them to simultaneously or sequentially deposit solid-lubricant coatings onto target objectives...
Briefs Defense
Composite Material Fire Safety Training Course
AFRL scientists and engineers, working cooperatively with experts from academia and the firefighting community, have developed a Composite Material Fire Safety training program designed to improve...
Briefs Materials
Conductive Polymeric Nanocomposite Materials
AFRL scientists have developed a method for uniformly dispersing carbon nanofibers throughout polymeric materials to increase their conductivity. Engineers will be able to employ the resulting...
Briefs Aerospace
Strain-Induced Porosity Model
AFRL scientists developed advanced computer models to improve the processing and quality of titanium alloys used in manufacturing gas turbine engine parts and critical structural components for military aircraft....
Briefs Electronics & Computers
Microelectromechanical Systems Switch Simulator
AFRL materials scientists developed a highly sophisticated laboratory instrument that simulates the effects of physical forces and electrical current on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)...
Briefs Materials
AFRL Supports C-5A Evaluation Program
AFRL materials integrity experts are collaborating with the Aeronautical Systems Center's C-5 Systems Group, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center (WR-ALC), and Air Mobility Command (AMC) in an effort to...
Briefs Electronics & Computers
Adaptable Miniature Initiation System Technology
The ever-changing nature of warfare presents constant challenges to weapon system designers, who must carefully consider various perspectives of mutual importance. Specifically, designers must...
Briefs Aerospace
Dynamic Air Battle Planning
An air tasking order (ATO) implements air operations supporting the joint force commander's campaign by assigning aircraft and munitions to targets and specifying the timing and grouping of air missions. Currently,...
Briefs Defense
AFRL Seeks Ways to Prevent Hearing Loss in Military Environments
In the 1988 movie "Good Morning, Vietnam," character Adrian Cronauer, a Saigon- based military disc jockey, performs an on-air skit in which he contacts an artilleryman in the...
Briefs Sensors/Data Acquisition
Advanced Hardware-in-the-Loop Sensor Simulation
AFRL researchers and their counterparts at CG2, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quantum3D, Inc., are collaborating through a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to...
Briefs Data Acquisition
AFRL Supports Desert Hawk Program
AFRL aeronautical engineers collaborated with the Electronic Systems Center's (ESC) Force Protection Program Office, Hanscom Air Force Base (AFB), Massachusetts, to conduct an in-house effort assessing the...
Briefs Materials
Dielectric Coolants
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is the Department of Defense's affordable next-generation strike aircraft designed to meet the needs of the Air Force (AF), Navy, Marines, and US allies. Currently in development by Lockheed...
Briefs Materials
Composites Affordability Initiative
AFRL and Boeing have developed an innovative structural inspection technique for testing bonded structures. This technique provides materials engineers a first-time, validated, nondestructive capability to...
Briefs Materials
Geopolymers
The use of ceramics in an ancient culture is one measure of that society's overall technical sophistication. Combining the study of ancient ceramics with modern science and technology has led to the creation of new ceramics with...
Briefs Materials
Recent Advances in Insensitive Munitions
AFRL scientists from the High Explosives Research and Development facility successfully developed, demonstrated, and transitioned a next-generation melt-castable explosive formulation. The new...
Briefs Materials
Super-High-Strength Aluminum Alloy
AFRL researchers developed a super-high-strength aluminum alloy that engineers can use to improve the capability and performance of aerospace components—cryogenic rocket engine components, in particular....
Briefs Electronics & Computers
Eddy Current Inspection System
AFRL manufacturing technology engineers, working with personnel from the 76th Maintenance Wing's Software and Propulsion Maintenance Groups at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) and Wyle Laboratories...
Briefs RF & Microwave Electronics
Collapsing and Closing Unmanned Air Vehicle Swarms
AFRL researchers are exploring an adaptive and reconfigurable unmanned air vehicle (UAV) swarm configuration known as "collapsing and closing UAV swarms." This approach to developing UAV swarms...
Briefs Manufacturing & Prototyping
Rapid Model Fabrication for Responsive Aerodynamic Experimental Research
Technicians machine traditional metal wind tunnel models in a process that can span months. Although these models are highly precise, the meticulously slow manufacturing...
Briefs Information Technology
A Concept for Information Extraction From Remote Wireless Sensor Networks
Recent advances in the development of microsensors, microprocessors, information fusion algorithms, and ad hoc networking have led to increasingly capable wireless sensor...
Briefs Software
Unified Flow Solver
A variety of gas flow problems are characterized by the presence of rarefied and continuum domains. In a rarefied domain, the mean free path of gas molecules is comparable to (or larger than) a characteristic scale of the...
Briefs Photonics/Optics
Cyberspace Security via Quantum Encryption
Perfect information- theoretical security requires that the meaning of an encrypted message transmitted from point A to point B be statistically independent of the ciphertext in which that message is...
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